This weekend the third update to Shadowrun was release for XBOX 360 and Windows Vista. The changes are as follows:

Title Update 3 Contains:

Gameplay
Dwarves can no longer be unawared with the katana or Artifact.
Elves’ regeneration ability has been tweaked:
Increased time before Elf begins to heal by a quarter second.
Increased essence cost of healing by ~15%.

Audio
Enemy footstep audio will now be easier to hear in Live games.

Bots
Bot difficulty will scale with players’ average Trueskill in Public Match games.

UI
Added “Advanced Settings” screen when setting up a Private Game, which contains the following options:
Max players – Ability to determine the maximum number of players that can join the game
Preferences – Ability to use the preferences of all players to determine the map rotation
Handicapping – Ability to turn Karma on or off
Fixed “stop” functionality for when a game-start countdown has begun in the lobby.
Improved messaging for when your party is split or rejoined due to team balance.
Improved messaging about Artifact clearing bodies in Attrition.

Vista Only:
1) Fixed some user interface issues on the dedicated server administrator console.
2) Fixed some user interface issues on the Live menus.
3) Silver players will now show up on the recently played player list of Gold players.
4) Fixed a hard lock that could occur under certain conditions when accepting a game invite.

Vista and 360:1) Implemented improvements to matchmaking. We expect a 200-300% improvement in wait times. We’ve also added clearer status messaging.
2) Improved sync times. When a new player joins a game, the synching wait will be reduced.
3) Made changes to improve party system. Parties should be split less now, and when splitting is absolutely necessary, we attempt to regroup the party later.
4) Changed some of the achievement descriptions to make goals clearer.
5) Improved bot AI.

As we’ve mentioned before, the team’s working on a number of title updates for Shadowrun. The first one should go live within the next day or two.

The first update will be very limited in scope. Here’s what’s on the menu:

Vista:1) Addressed a problem with viewing Shadowrun in the Games Explorer on the Vista versions for Portugal and Finland.
2) Fixed an issue involving removing the controller while playing on Vista.
3) If you lose your connection to LIVE while playing on Vista, the UI behaves correctly now.

360:1) Fixed a hard lock that can occur when a player signs out of a profile on 360.
2) Fixed a hard lock that can occur after starting a bot match in Chapter 4 of the training.
3) Fixed an issue that affected voice-over in the Italian 360 version.

Common:- Fixed a small memory leak that could affect performance and stability in some situations.

The second update will be more meaty and address many of the known issues listed on the Technical Issues forums here. We will post detailed notes when the update gets closer to release.

Stay tuned for news of additional updates. A big thank you to those of you who’ve worked with us in identifying and tracking issues in the wild – your help and patience are very much appreciated.